Thursday, August 03, 2017

Game of Thrones 7:03 The Queen's Justice

And welcome to week 3 of Game of Thrones! This has got to be one of the best episodes of the show yet, and there's a LOT to say, so without further ado let's jump right in.

Nikki:
What an episode! We got two reunions, one moment of
two seven-season leads sharing the screen for the first time, we watched the
Westerosian chess pieces move around the board yet again, and saw the best
chugging of wine in TV history (followed by one of the greatest moments ever on
this series).

Throughout this episode, the recurring
theme seemed to be monstrosity: who/what are the true monsters in Westeros?
What constitutes monstrosity? And what should the Westerosians be afraid of —
should the strongest armies be engaged in a battle amongst themselves, or
should they be joining forces to fight the dead that will end them all,
regardless of the outcome of the game of thrones?

After the credits (where I keep meaning to
mention: despite Pyke not being shown this season, they keep showing it in the
credits because it’s the Greyjoy stronghold, and I love the way the two bridges swing wildly when the three towers
rise and lock into place at the beginning of each episode), we immediately open
with Jon Snow arriving with Davos at Dragonstone as Tyrion and Missandei await
his arrival on the shore. This is the first time Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister
have been reunited since Tyrion left the Wall in season one. They glare for a
moment, acknowledging each other, with Tyrion addressing him as “the bastard of
Winterfell” and Jon calling him “the dwarf of Casterly Rock,” before each man’s
face breaks into a sly smile.

It’s an fun moment for fans that calls back
to the very first episode, when the Lannisters arrived at Winterfell and Tyrion
noticed that bastard son standing apart from the others:

Tyrion: Let me tell you something, bastard.
Never forget what you are — the rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor
and it can never be used to hurt you.Jon: What the hell do you know about being
a bastard?Tyrion: All dwarfs are bastards in their
fathers’ eyes.

In this moment the two men find a
connection: each one is the son of a man who doesn’t acknowledge them as a
rightful son. In Jon’s case it’s a wee bit more complicated (since Ned isn’t
actually his father), but Jon doesn’t realize that. And now, seven seasons
later, Jon is on his own but has risen above Ned’s achievements, and has been
deemed the King of the North, while Tyrion has murdered his own father and has
been ousted by his siblings, who would kill him on sight if given the chance.
He has become the Hand of the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and now that he
seems to have put his alcoholism to the side, has become a trusted advisor to
Daenerys. As Tyrion acknowledges to Jon, “It’s been a long road, but we’re both
still here.”

After Jon and Davos are stripped of their
weapons, they begin the ascent to Daenerys’s throne room, with Jon being
dwarfed by the Dothraki soldiers as he chats with Tyrion. Davos tries to make
small talk with Missandei, but doesn’t get very far, simply muttering to Jon
that things have changed around here.

Tyrion asks about Sansa, anticipating Jon’s
questions or comments before Jon has the chance to ask them (which we know he
wouldn’t have done in any case). He tells him it was a sham marriage, and
unconsummated. He tells Jon that Sansa is smarter than she lets on, to which
Jon amusingly replies, “She’s starting to let on.” Ha! Jon is actually less
interested in hearing about the marriage his sister was forced into, and more
interested to find out how Tyrion became the Hand of the Queen, but Tyrion just
waves it off, saying it was a long and blessed ceremony, and adding, “To be
honest I was drunk for most of it.”

If Jon weren’t there to try to save all of
humanity against the white walkers, and Tyrion weren’t dodging deeper questions
of what really has happened to him over the past seven years, this scene would
have looked like two old friends catching up after a long absence. But there’s
a deep gravity to the situation, and Jon has to remind himself that he’s there
to see Daenerys. The reminder comes quickly when one of her dragons swoops low
overhead, knocking both Jon and Davos to the ground in abject fear. I couldn’t
help but remember the look on Tyrion’s face as he stood on that boat and saw
Drogon for the first time. I assume one never forgets their first dragon, and
the looks on Davos and Jon’s faces are priceless... and pretty much what Tyrion
looked like a couple of seasons ago. Tyrion holds out a hand to help up Jon,
and reassures him, “I’d say you get used to them, but you really don’t.”

And then before the big meeting between Jon
and Daenerys — for which we’ve been waiting SEVEN YEARS — we flash up to
Melisandre and Varys chatting in a tower. “I’ve brought fire and ice together,”
she says, but he’s sussed out that she’s afraid of something.

Melisandre: My time whispering in the ears
of kings has come to an end.Varys: Oh, I doubt that. Give us commonfolk
one taste of power, we’re like the lion who tasted man. Nothing is ever so
sweet again.

Melisandre isn’t scared of Varys, and
she’ll have none of his chit-chat, reminding him instead that neither one of
them is commonfolk anymore. She knows that Davos has sworn to kill her if he
ever lays eyes on her again, and she won’t taunt him by letting him know she’s
there. As you and I have said many, many times before, Christopher, Davos is
one of the best characters on the show simply because he’s possibly the most
honourable. He has intense loyalty, but knows when something is morally wrong.
He is one of the most trustworthy characters on the show, and when he says
he’ll do something, he’ll do it. And Melisandre knows that.

And then we cut to the moment we’ve been
waiting for. Missandei introduces her leader to Jon and Davos: “You stand in
the presence of Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen, rightful heir to the
Iron Throne, rightful Queen of the Andals and the First Men, protector of the
Seven Kingdoms, the Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, the
Unburnt, the Breaker of Chains.”

There’s a pause as Jon and Davos stand
there in awe for a moment, before Davos realizes he’s supposed to do the same,
and he says, “This is Jon Snow...” Beat. “He’s King of the North.” It doesn’t
exactly trumpet in Jon with a parade and bagpipes, but it’s all they’ve got
right now.

What did you think of this meeting we’ve
all been waiting for for so long,
Chris?

Christopher: It was brilliant. As was this entire episode. Before I talk about
the long-awaited encounter between Jon and Daenerys, however, let me say just
how much I loved this episode. It is one of the best ones of the series, but
unlike some of the great episodes that function almost as standalones and rely
upon epic spectacle (“Blackwater” comes to mind, as does “The Battle of the
Bastards”), “The Queen’s Justice” is brilliant specifically because of the
cumulative power of this series. We’re seven seasons in, and narrative threads
initially spun out at the very beginning are starting to resolve into tapestry.
We’ve lived with these characters for so long now—especially Jon, Daenerys, and
Sansa, as well as Jaime and Cersei—that seeing these events unfold carries such
emotional weight.

But that in and of itself is only half the
story here—the other half is just how good the writing is, and how beautiful
this episode is to look at. All of the dialogue has a kinetic energy that is
reminiscent of Aaron Sorkin at his best—not sententious, speechifying Sorkin,
but dynamic, rhythmic Sorkin, in which the cadences of conversation reflect the
intelligence and intensity of the characters. How many amazing interchanges do
we experience? Tyrion and Jon, Jon and Daenerys, Varys and Melisandre, Mycroft
Tycho Nestoris and Cersei, Ebrose and Sam, and of course—the cherry on the cake
of this brilliant episode—Jaime and Olenna. And as I say above, so much of
these exchanges is based in our familiarity with these characters. Seeing
Tyrion and Jon meet again was worth the price of admission; Jon sparring with
Daenerys was what we’ve been waiting six seasons for; but then those moments of
humour, like when Tyrion complains that he can’t brood in the vicinity of Jon
Snow because he’d feel like an amateur, are similarly payoffs that come from
the slow burn of a long, well-tended narrative. Ditto for the moment you
mention, Nikki, when Davos’ best response to Daenerys’ lengthy CV is to simply
say “This is Jon Snow.” It’s a hilarious fish out of water moment, reflective
of both Jon Snow and Davos’ discomfort with the trappings of rank, but also
manages to communicate something about Jon Snow’s simplicity of purpose, and
simplicity of self.

And before I get into Jon’s encounter with
Daenerys, let me rhapsodize a moment longer on just how beautiful this episode looked. Mark Mylod, who directed
this episode, made extraordinary use of the natural landscapes in which they
shot:

I’ll let those stills speak for themselves.

Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. This is
the classic definition of dramatic irony, no? At this point we all know, when
Daenerys says, “I am the last Targaryen,” that NO, no you’re not! Dude standing
in front of you? Your nephew! Which is weird in a variety of ways and ever so
slightly creepy (especially with all the Daenerys-Jon ‘shipping that
has already begun), but it makes all this maneuvering and negotiation at
least somewhat moot.

That being said, what I loved most about
this scene was the weight of history lying upon it, something that has been a
common trope for this season so far. Tyrion observes that, had he been Jon’s
advisor, he’d have argued vigorously against meeting Daenerys—as he says,
Starks have not fared well when they travel south, a point raised by pretty
much every other person at Winterfell. When Daenerys demands that Jon Snow bend
the knee, he reminds her of precisely what Sansa reminded him, that their
grandfather and uncle had been burned alive by the Mad King. And while Daenerys
has the good grace to ask his forgiveness for her father’s transgressions, she
still expects him to honour the oaths sworn by his forbearers.

I think one of the things I loved most
about this scene is the way it shows the weakness of Daenerys’ claim. Yes, she
is (excepting Jon Snow) the last scion of the Targaryens; by the laws of
patrilineal descent, she has a claim on the throne, but that claim was, for all
intents and purposes, obviated by Robert Baratheon’s usurpation of her father.
I kept wanting Jon to say, “The Targaryens ruled for three hundred years!
That’s, like, thirty seconds in the history of Westeros!” (Fun historical fact:
given that GRRM based his novels in part on the Wars of the Roses, it’s worth
noting that the Plantagenets—the royal family that features in Shakespeare’s
history plays—essentially ruled England from Henry II’s coronation in 1154
until the death of Richard III in 1485, a span of 331 years. So the Targaryen
dynasty syncs up with that history a little). Daenerys believes herself the
rightful ruler of the Seven Kingdoms by law, but her ancestor Aegon took the
Iron Throne by right of conquest. He forced the kings of Westeros—including
Jon’s ancestor Torrhen Stark—to swear fealty, or else be turned into cinders by
the same dragonfire that forged the Iron Throne.

Which is an option that Daenerys has at her
disposal, but one which, as Jon Snow points out, she is reluctant to deploy.
“You haven’t stormed King’s Landing,” he says. “Why not? The only reason I can
see is you don’t want to kill thousands of innocent people.” A point that we
know is true, because we heard Daenerys say as much in last week’s episode—and
an indication that she grasps the weakness of her position from a legal and
historical perspective. She learned hard lessons in Meereen, a city in which
her only authority, ultimately, came from the people themselves. Though she
might claim her family name gives her rights to Westeros, she knows a wise
ruler wins the people.

This does not, however, prevent her from
telling Jon Snow that, however batshit her dad was, her family name gives her
rights to Westeros, and she is annoyed that he is reluctant to swear fealty.

(Just as an aside, was anyone else
remembering Daenerys’ willingness last season to entertain the idea of letting
the Iron Islands be a separate kingdom in exchange for Yara’s allegiance and
her fleet? Where’s that open-mindedness with Jon Snow?)

If we realize in this scene how tenuous
Daenerys’ legal claim to the throne is, we also realize how ludicrous Jon
Snow’s warning about White Walkers is. One wonders if Daenerys would have
tolerated his apparent gibberings had Melisandre not primed her that (1) Jon
Snow was someone of substance, and (2) she needed to listen to what he said.

One way or another, Jon’s impassioned plea
is cut short by the bad news of Yara’s fleet being waylaid, and we segue to
Theon being fished out of the drink. And from there, we go to Euron making his
triumphant way through the streets of King’s Landing, with his prisoners in
tow. What did you think of his presentation to Cersei, Nikki? And perhaps more
importantly, what did you think of Cersei’s long monologue to Ellaria?

Nikki: Excellent summation of a scene we’ve been waiting to see for years, my friend, and I agree: it’s
episodes like this one that make long-form television worth watching. I wanted
to add three things: one, I couldn’t help but think while watching it... Jon
Snow is standing before Daenerys talking of the dead coming back to life and
walking south, and tells her he’s seen it. That Ice has defied all logic, all
laws of nature, and is resurrecting the dead and they will vanquish the living.
And she looks at him like he’s some nutjob who just climbed down from the crazy
tree. And yet... Daenerys Targaryen cannot be burned by fire. He has seen Ice
defy logic, but with Daenerys, Fire defies all logic. She has emerged unburned
from several fiery moments, and oh, by the way, she owns three motherfreakin’
DRAGONS that she hatched from the funeral pyre of her husband from which she
emerged not only alive and unburned, but with a full head of hair when
technically she should have been bald as a cueball.

So I thought it was interesting that she
thought of his account as a bunch of “myths” when her entire life story sounds
like some jacked-up Brothers Grimm tale.

Secondly, I loved the moment where Davos
starts to talk about Jon Snow’s resurrection and Jon leans in like,
“Hush-hush-hush-zipit!!” It reminded me of Basil Fawlty marching around Fawlty
Towers and saying loudly around the Germans, “DON’T MENTION THE WAR!!!”

And thirdly, one of our readers, Audrey, wondered
on my FB wall if, when the dragon swooped down at Jon on his walk up to the
castle, is it possible the dragons can sense another Targaryen in their midst?
HMMM...

But on to King’s Landing! Yes, let’s gloss
quickly over Euron’s triumphant return and Yara and the Sand Snakes having to a
do a walk of shame similar to Cersei’s and then him being a dick to Jaime. I
can’t wait to see terrible things happen to Euron (and yet, as I mentioned two
weeks ago, I kind of love watching him at the same time because he’s just so slimy!) He will be the naval captain
and Jaime will be the army captain... and both men want Cersei. But let’s get
to the meat of what happens next.

My husband thought that when Ellaria and
Tyene got there, Cersei would go to town on Ellaria. But I said to him, no,
that’ll never happen: she’ll go to town on Tyene, and make Ellaria watch. It’s
the kind of revenge any mom would enact on another mom if the argument involved
one of their children being hurt. And that’s exactly what Cersei does.

Lena Headey is extraordinary in this scene
— I don’t think she’s been better in this entire series. She’s angry, vengeful,
but about to see her deepest fantasy come true. Yet she can’t help but betray
how broken she still is over the death of her daughter through the waver in her
voice, the bitterness of her words, the jabs she takes at Ellaria’s expense.
She’s matched in this scene only by Indira Varma, who has an even more
difficult task as she must convey all of those same things — anger and
brokenness over the death of Oberyn, fear for her daughter’s life, pleading —
all without saying a word. Her eyes brim with tears throughout the scene, her
forehead has veins pulsing out of them in terror, and she strains at her chains
in an effort to gouge out Cersei’s eyes one minute, plead for any shred of
sympathy the next. The two actresses are remarkable.

The best way to go through this scene is to
actually quote Cersei’s words, because her monologue is brilliant, and as you
point out, Chris, the dialogue is SO well written in this episode. This is
probably my new favourite monologue of a series that has featured so many:
“When my daughter was taken from me — my only daughter — well, you can’t
imagine how that feels unless you’ve lost a child,” she begins. This one
sentence contains so much. We know she’s about to be brutally honest with
Ellaria and tell her how Ellaria’s actions affected her. We hear the resentment
in the way she says “only,” and there’s also taunting there — she says the
sentence in a way that indicates Ellaria couldn’t possibly know what this feels
like, despite the fact Ellaria’s other daughters were killed just hours
earlier. It’s vicious and heartbreaking. And then Cersei continues:

I fed her at my own breast even though they
told me to give her to the wet nurse. I couldn’t bear to see her in another
woman’s arms. I never got to have a mother, but Myrcella did. She was mine and
you took her from me. Why did you do that?!

At this moment Cersei’s voice wavers for
the one and only time in her monologue. She’s never gotten over the pain of
losing Myrcella, who was clearly her favourite. She was devastated after
Joffrey’s death, yet there was a part of her that was perhaps relieved — even
his own mother knew he’d turned into a monster. Myrcella was innocent and good
and kind, and was pulled into this as an innocent casualty. Cersei has never
gotten past that. Tommen was similarly sweet and kind, but he took his own
life, which Cersei has taken to be a judgment on her actions, and a betrayal by
him that he would leave her in such a way. Myrcella’s death is the one that
resonates the deepest for her. But then she composes herself and talks about
Tyene’s Dornish beauty, and how she guesses Tyene is actually Ellaria’s
favourite, too. She says we shouldn’t choose favourites, but sometimes the
heart just wants what it wants. “We all make our choices,” she says. “You chose
to murder my daughter. You must have felt powerful after you made that choice.
Do you feel powerful now?”

Ellaria knows what’s coming. She doesn’t
know when, and she doesn’t know how, but she knows something terrible is about
to befall Tyene. And then Cersei actually, unknowingly, aligns herself with
Arya by saying she doesn’t sleep well at night, instead imagining how she will
hurt the enemies who have hurt her. Turns out, much like Arya (for whom Cersei
is at the top of the list), Cersei has a kill list as well. Probably every
character does. She tells Ellaria she imagined crushing her skull the way the
Mountain crushed Oberyn’s, but that would be too quick. She imagined him
crushing Tyene’s skull instead, but that would be a terrible waste of her
beauty.

And then... she kisses Tyene on the lips,
and the horror of what Cersei has just done washes over Ellaria. Her eyes bulge
in terror, her body goes rigid, and her mind must be travelling at a million
miles a second. In that moment she probably regrets everything she’s done to
get to this moment, nothing more than the death kiss she herself planted on
Myrcella’s lips.

Cersei quietly wipes her own lips and takes the antidote as
Qyburn explains it could take hours or days to die, but death will be certain.
And then Cersei deals the final blow, which even I didn’t see coming:

Your daughter will die here in this cell.
You will be here watching when she does. You’ll be here the rest of your days.
If you refuse to eat, we’ll force food down your throat. You will live to watch
your daughter rot, to watch that beautiful face collapse to bone and dust, all
the while contemplating the choices you’ve made. [to the Mountain] Make sure
the guards change the torches every few hours — I don’t want her to miss a
thing.

And with that, Cersei sweeps out of the
room. Tyene’s fate is sealed, and Ellaria doesn’t just have the burden of
watching her daughter die, but of watching (and smelling) her daughter’s body
as it rots. The rest of her (possibly many) days and years will be spent watching
her daughter disintegrate, and they will be filled with unspeakable torture.
It’s the worst revenge anyone could have on a mother, and Cersei’s done it.

And here’s the part where I go dark: it
felt deserved. Yes, I said it. I despise Cersei, but Myrcella had no role to
play in any of this other than to be the pawn that Ellaria drew in to the
battle. Ellaria killed a little girl, and destroyed her mother. Yes, Ellaria believes
that Cersei is responsible for Oberyn’s death, but as Chris and I both pointed
out in that episode, and as Cersei mentions at the top of her monologue in this
scene, Oberyn COULD have won that battle. He had the upper hand, but he had to
prance around the ring, sucking up the accolades, giving Clegane the
opportunity to get back up and crush his head like a melon. Cersei didn’t kill
Oberyn: his own pride did. And Ellaria killed Myrcella out of revenge. If
someone had killed my child, I would want the worst possible thing to happen to
that person, and I can’t think of anything worse than what Cersei has put on
Ellaria (I wouldn’t be able to actually do it, but one has to admire Cersei for
being able to do it... when you have nothing to lose, you can do anything). As
Cersei leaves the room, my heart went out to Ellaria and Tyene, straining at
their chains, their mouths gagged, able to see each other but not hug each
other for comfort or touch each other in any way. But another part of me felt,
Ellaria deserves this.

A Lannister always pays her debts, indeed.

And then we cut to Cersei walking into
Jaime’s chambers and kissing him full on the mouth, and all I could think was,
“OMG I hope she really wiped off that Long Farewell from her lips!” She and
Jaime sleep together for the first time since Myrcella’s death because for
once, Cersei feels like she might be on the path to becoming whole again.
They’re awakened by a page (who shares Cersei’s haircut for some reason, though
hers looks better than that shaggy mess on Cersei’s head), telling her the man
from Braavos has arrived.

And then Mycroft shows up, and basically
explains that the Bank of Braavos places its bets on the side that they believe
will win, and the Lannisters owe a huge debt to Braavos that has never been
paid back (a debt that goes back to her spendthrift husband, Robert Baratheon).
Cersei has an answer for everything, reminding him that the Bank of Braavos has
put a lot of money into the slave trade, and how’s that working out for them
now that Daenerys has freed the slaves? Mycroft pauses and says, “The slave
trade has seen a... downturn.” She tells him Daenerys isn’t a queen so much as
a revolutionary, and revolutionaries aren’t worth banking on because they’re
not about the money. Cersei, on the other hand, will show him who’s worth
banking on. Cersei explains that she needs two weeks to prove him wrong, that
the Lannisters will be the stronger party, and that she will pay off what she
owes because “A Lannister always pays his debts.” Mycroft smiles and remarks
that Cersei is definitely her father’s daughter.

And now it’s time for Tyrion and Jon Snow
to brood on the same cliff. What did you think about their conversation post–Daenerys/Jon
meeting, Christopher?

Christopher: I know that I’m supposed to be super stoked that Jon Snow and
Daenerys have finally met—and I am—but I think my favourite parts of this
episode were Tyrion and Jon reuniting. Tyrion is whom Jon needed these past six
seasons—he needed that voice of pragmatic wisdom guiding him, correcting all
the bad instincts he learned from Ned Stark. These two characters have
incredible chemistry, something we’re reminded of when, after their stilted
greetings on the beach, they both smile. A “sly smile,” as you say, Nikki—a
less restrained pair of actors might have broken into grins and laughter and
embraced, but here we have a world of respect communicated subtly.

As I say above, I love the bit of humour
that begins this scene. “I came down here to brood over my failure to predict
the Greyjoy attack,” Tyrion tells Jon Snow. “You’re making it difficult. You
look a lot better brooding than I do. You make me feel like I’m failing at
brooding.” Well, of course he feels that way: Jon Snow is an Olympic-level
brooder. If brooding were a Nobel category, he’d be a laureate yesterday. He
could give Angel a run for his Byronic money. If Springsteen ever recorded a
single titled “Born to Brood,” it would have Jon Snow on the cover. This we all
know, because we’ve been watching for six seasons, so Tyrion’s little gibe is
at once a vintage Tyrion bon mot and
a lovely shout out to the audience. It’s also a subtle little preamble to the
wisdom the Dwarf of Casterly Rock will be laying down on the King in the North.
Brooding is certainly aesthetically pleasing when done by the likes of Jon
Snow, but there’s a metric fuck-tonne of practical considerations with which Game of Thrones, as a fantasy series, is
almost fetishistically obsessed. Logistics, money, politics, and of course the
great grey area between good and evil into which pretty much every character on
this show falls.

Jon Snow is a character who would have
fared so much better in Narnia or Middle-Earth—virtuous and pure of purpose,
he’s a Peter Pevensie or an Aragorn, but in Westeros such people don’t tend to
do well. They need a Tyrion to guide them.

In our first post of the new season, I
compared Jon Snow to a climate change activist beset by deniers and people who
don’t see the severity of the threat. That comes through in this episode as
well, especially in terms of Jon’s frustration with everyone. And frankly, his
frustration is not entirely reasonable: when he says “it’s hard for me to
fathom, it really is—if someone told me about the White Walkers and the Night
King …” he trails off, as if suddenly recognizing that, well, he’d probably not
believe it either. Tyrion puts it in perspective, saying “People’s minds aren’t
made for problems that large.” There’s a great line in Ian McEwan’s novel Solar, in which one character says she
can’t let herself think about climate change, because if she did, she wouldn’t
be able to think about anything else. As Tyrion says, people can deal with
concrete and understandable monstrosity more than they can with something
enormous but abstract: “The White Walkers, the Night King, the army of the dead
… it’s almost a relief to confront a comfortably familiar monster like my
sister.” But “conventional wisdom” necessarily gives way to evidence, and a
wise person knows to trust the trustworthy. “It was nonsense, and everybody knew it,” he tells Jon. “But then
Mormont saw them. You saw them. And I trust the eyes of an honest man more than
I trust what everybody knows.”

The other key theme in this scene is
patrimony, and the mistakes and sins of parents carried by their offspring.
When Jon Snow laments that perhaps he’s just repeating his father’s mistakes,
Tyrion tells him “Children are not their fathers … luckily for all of us.” This
is an episode preoccupied with fathers: I said above that the weight of history
lies upon the action, and it makes itself most poignantly present in the memories
of fathers no longer present, but whose actions in life still affect the
behaviour and expectations of the living. Tyene will die in Ellaria’s presence
because of Ellaria’s revenge for the death of Tyene’s father; both Cersei and
Jaime are compared to Tywin, while Tyrion orchestrates the Unsullied’s sack of
Casterly Rock by way of a task Tywin once gave him to humiliate him; Daenerys
must struggle upstream against the trauma inflicted by her father on an entire
kingdom; Jon Snow sees himself repeating his father and grandfather’s mistakes;
but in the episode’s great dramatic irony, we know who his true father was.

But Tyrion, perhaps because at this point
he has little more than contempt for the memory of his father, is having none
of it: telling Jon Snow, basically, not to be an idiot—that it is entirely
unreasonable to expect Daenerys to accept the words of a man she’d never met
after a single meeting, a meeting in which he has all but rejected her claim to
the throne. People are rarely what they seem, that there is more to “Northern
fools than meets the eye,” and, by the same token, that Jon would do well to
familiarize himself with what Daenerys has done and why. “She protects people
from monsters,” he tells Jon, “just as you do.” As you say in your opening
comments, Nikki, this is an episode about monstrosity and the forms it takes,
and the question of which monsters are worse. Tyrion’s point here is to raise
that very question to Jon Snow: he protects his people from monsters, but
sometimes the human ones—like Ramsay Bolton—are at least as bad as the
non-human ones.

I hope when they make their submission for
Peter Dinklage’s Emmy nomination this year that they include this episode,
because he’s so damn good in this scene. Tyrion lays it all out for Jon Snow;
it’s such a great contrast between the single-minded ideologue living in
frustration because nobody sees his simple, glaring Truth, and the talented
political operative who knows how to get
shit done. Tyrion believes Jon, but is also very aware of what is possible
and what is not. Jon is ready to decamp almost immediately because Daenerys is
unreceptive to his pleas; Tyrion puts him in his place, pointing out “It’s not
a reasonable thing to ask,” but then saying, “So, do you have anything reasonable to ask?”

As it turns out? Yes. Yes, he does.
“Dragonglass?” Daenerys asks incredulously, and Tyrion finds himself patiently
explaining to his queen—who chooses at this moment to be as obtuse as her
nephew—why they should grant this request. “We just lost two of our allies!”
she says petulantly. “Which is why,” Tyrion responds slowly, almost as if he’s
sounding out the words for a dunce, “I was meeting with Jon Snow—a potential
ally.” When she asks if he believes Jon’s tales, Tyrion makes a pretty commonsensical
point—that he wouldn’t have come if he wasn’t under great duress, and that
letting him mine the dragonglass earns Daenerys a potential ally in exchange
for a resource that is worthless to her and which she was unaware of anyway.

While I’m irked by the fact that this will
be a short season, I have to admit that it seems to be making for a much
brisker narrative progression. I had more or less assumed that the long-awaited
meeting of Daenerys and Jon Snow would come at the very end of the episode, frustrating
viewers by drawing this particular drama out. But no: not only do they meet at
the start, but we get TWO tête-a-têtes
between the characters that have become, for all intents and purposes, the main
characters in this sprawling ensemble.

Their second scene together, however brief,
is powerful, and we begin to see the first stirring of an alliance based in
trust. She tells him that she named two of her dragons for her brothers, and
then notes that he lost two brothers as well. I have to imagine Jon is being
polite when he doesn’t correct that number—as far as he knows, he’s lost three brothers, as he doesn’t yet know
Bran is still alive, as Sam swore to keep Bran’s secret. (Wait … did he? I know
he did in the novels, but now I can’t remember if he did in the series).

And speaking of Bran … what did you think
of the latest Stark reunion, Nikki?

Nikki: Oh man, you ask a good question at the end there, and I’m sure our
readers will let us know the real answer, but I’m pretty sure Theon told Sansa that
he didn’t, in fact, kill Rickon and Bran, and so she knows they’re alive at
that point (I’m thinking that was end of season five? Damn, I need a rewatch).
So she would have told Jon that, but they would also know that Rickon is now
dead because Jon watched him die at the Battle of the Bastards when Rickon
wouldn’t frickin’ zig-zag. So my thinking is, they know he lived, but they
don’t know if he’s still alive because he’s out there on his own and is
crippled. For the time being, Jon isn’t going to count him among the dead until
he knows for sure.

But yes, speaking of Bran, onto that...
awkward... reunion. I’ve been dying to see the Starks actually get a bit of
happy news, and knowing how close-knit the family is, and how devastated
they’ve been over the deaths of Ned, Catelyn, Robb, and Rickon, finding anyone who shares their DNA would be a
happy moment right now. So when there’s a knock at the gate and Sansa is
called, I thought, “OMG I WAS WRONG IT’S ARYA!” And... it wasn’t Arya. Last
week I suggested that after seeing Nymeria, perhaps Arya realizes she doesn’t
actually belong at Winterfell and was turning to go south instead. And if
that’s the case, maybe we’ll never get that long-awaited reunion between her
and her family. Instead, we get Bran. Dead-eyed, robot-sounding, George-Harrison-looking,
prominent-Adam’s-apple, three-eyed-raven Bran. The best part of this scene is
the look on Sansa’s face, the swirl of emotions that rises up in her, the fact
that her brother was just a tiny little thing the last time she saw him,
crippled, and that she’s already mourned his death once and here he is, finally
back from the dead. All of those things pass over her face in an instant
(Sophie Turner does a beautiful job in this scene) and she rushes to his side and
grips him in a huge bear hug. And Bran... doesn’t hug back. Um... I thought he
was a paraplegic? What the heck happened to his arms?!

Anyway.

You and I have lamented throughout the
series, Chris, that the Bran sections are the snoozefests, and the show is best
when we don’t have to deal with Bran (remember that joyous season five?) And he
should be an interesting character: he’s a Stark, he’s the unfortunate victim
of Jaime and Cersei’s canoodling way back in season one, he’s the breathing
example of why we can never 100% forgive Jaime Lannister, he’s a warg, he is
one of their best hopes in the war against the white walkers. But there’s just
something so unsettling about this kid. He’s gone away a boy and come back some
mystical guru changed by a cult, and Sansa has to sit there going, “Ehhh...
yeah, I’m gonna be over there now bye” after spending a whole two minutes with
him.

The gist of the conversation is basically:

Sansa: You’re the lord of Winterfell now.Bran: I can’t be the lord of anything, I’m
the three-eyed raven.Sansa: WTF is that?Bran: Sorry, you wouldn’t understand.Sansa: Uh, try me?Bran: I can see everything, past, present,
future, all in weird little bits, but I need to train more so I can see the
picture more clearly. I know all of this because the three-eyed raven told me.Sansa: I... thought... YOU were the
three-eyed raven?Bran: I told you it would be too
complicated, and by the way, you looked so beautiful that night Ramsay
violently raped you on your wedding night.

Jesus Christ,
Bran!!! First he mansplains the teachings of the three-eyed raven the way
Kellyanne Conway would explain the tweeting of the small-handed man, and then
of all the moments he could touch upon to let Sansa know he can see all, he
points out the single most traumatic moment of her life?

This is How Not to Reunite With Family 101.

But now... Bran’s defense, because I’ve
thought about this a lot and I believe this is the only way these scenes could
have gone. If you could see everything that’s ever happened, and everything
that will happen, but only in bits and pieces you could barely put together,
there are several ways you could handle this. Most people would simply go stark
raving mad, screaming and screaming whilst clutching their heads in agony. Or
you would kill yourself because NO ONE wants to live with the pain of the
history of the universe in their heads. Or you could adopt this Zen-like
attitude, shutting down all emotions because emotions will kill you. And Bran
has done exactly that. He can’t experience human emotions anymore because the
moment he feels pain over seeing his sister get raped, he’ll feel pain over
Rickon’s death, he’ll watch Ned’s head get chopped off in an endless loop,
he’ll see his mother’s throat slit, his brother’s unborn baby stabbed... he’ll
see every Stark ancestor, every person in the history of Winterfell be raped
and killed and mutilated throughout history. He needs to shut down emotions and
simply read this information the way a computer would. Bran simply cannot hug
Sansa: that would express happiness or gratitude or relief over seeing his
sister, and he can no longer feel those things. He can’t feel sympathy or
empathy in any way. He’s an automaton. He is one of their greatest weapons in
the fight against the white walkers (as long as he can figure out how to
control his powers) but he can no longer feel
anything emotionally.

He has given up his very soul in order to
give himself over to the cause. In a way, Bran IS dead, because this is not
Bran anymore. Of all the Starks, he is the one who no longer bears even the
slightest resemblance to his former self, not physically, emotionally, or
personality-wise. And as Sansa walks away from him, she knows it. He’s now an
ally, but he’s no longer her brother. There will be no more family chats in the
weirwood tree grove.

Now I skipped past the scene that preceded
this one, so I’ll touch on it briefly, but just before the knock at the gate,
Sansa is talking to Baelish and showing that while the boys are entirely focused
on war, the women can get down to the practical matters of how to stay alive
during the war. She sets about filling their grain stores, contacting local
Houses, setting up alliances as they head into the long winter. Meanwhile
Littlefinger is yip-yip-yipping into her ear telling her that he knows Cersei
better than anyone (to which she briskly and curtly replies, “No, you don’t”
and then points out, ooh, you think it’s a revelation that the woman who killed
my mother, brother, and father is evil? OLD NEWS, BUDDY) but he tells her that
the best way to live from this point on is to imagine every single possibility,
every outcome, is happening at once, so she will never be surprised.

And then along comes a brother who tells
her he can see everything that’s ever happened and will happen all at once.
Excellent timing, dude!

But now we move over to Sam and Sir Jorah.
The Maester inspects the wounds and says it’s like someone peeled off the
greyscale and put some sort of ointment on them. Sam tries to play dumb and
Jorah says nope, he just happened to wake up this way. The scene is really
funny just for their ridiculous attempts to put one over on the Maester, who
clearly knows he’s dealing with a couple of clowns who have figured out how to
conquer greyscale.

The triumph that Jorah Mormont will actually live and will
once again see his Khaleesi is undercut by the hilarity of the scene, which
then cuts to Sam in the Maester’s office. Archmaester Ebrose knows exactly what
Sam has done, and Sam sees a future of nothing but fecal duty from this point
on, until the Maester expresses how impressed he is that Sam did that. And he
asks how he did it. How in a place where they’ve all been trying to figure out
a cure did he just figure one out that quickly? Sam says, simply, “I read the
books and followed the instructions.” Ha! The Citadel is crammed full of books,
it’s built on books, it’s surrounded by books, and they spend all day looking
at books. And yet, somehow, it never seemed to have occurred to anyone to, you
know, check the bloody books. And so
he says Sam has proven himself well, and we have this moment of thinking OMG
Sam just fast-tracked himself to a quick grad school graduation and will be
given a class to teach... but no. He’s basically sent to the photocopier room
and told to make copies of the old, musty books sitting there.

I know we’re supposed to regard this as a
funny outcome, that them’s the breaks and Sam is not going to be able to
leapfrog over someone with more seniority, but I also read the scene as
pointing out everything that’s wrong in situations like that, whether it be
academia or other institutions. In a place where people are in agony and dying
of a disease, one man found a cure (whoa, that sentence sounded like the
opening of a movie trailer...) and used it to save the life of a man who seemed
beyond saving. And instead of immediately setting to work to save every other
person in the place, he’s sent off to yet another menial task as everyone else
gets back to whatever useless task they were doing before. Sam proved that the
answers can lie in books — not only did he figure out the cure for Ser Jorah,
but he discovered where Jon could find copious amounts of dragonglass — but the
other scholars say no, you’re moving too fast, young buck, let’s just slow down
and spend the next 200 years searching through these books slowly to find the
very things you found in a week, shall we? Sam will have to continue to be a
rebel if the Citadel is going to be any help at all against the white walkers,
because the other scholars are clearly too blinded by their own hierarchies and
traditions to see when someone has a better way of doing things. Here’s hoping
there’s a dazzling answer to everything somewhere in those scrolls (I’m hoping
for the Roman numeral 42 to be at the top of one of them!)

And from here we move back to the war room (“You
can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!”) and Daenerys and Tyrion enacting
their very important plan to trick Cersei. And I’ll let you take this one to
the end, my friend!

Christopher: Before I carry on to the end of the episode, one more aesthetic
observation: the stills from this episode could fill an art gallery, and they
seem evenly divided between the kind of epic landscape shots I cited above, and
people in rooms bathed in light from a window. We’re back in the war room, as
you say, and Daenerys and her chief advisors are framed in a nimbus of light
behind them. But throughout this episode, we have similar shots, from Ser
Jorah’s deeply symbolic moment of salvation after Ebrose’s diagnosis, to the
low-angle show of Tycho Nestoris, to the first glimpse we have of Lady Olenna
in her room, brooding as she awaits her fate.

I have little doubt that if one went back
and combed through the series from the start, we’d see lots of such shots—after
all, it is set in a world sans
electricity, so the directors and cinematographers have to be inventive with
torchlight and candlelight and sun streaming through windows. But it does seem
to me that this episode was particularly invested in this strategy, perhaps as
a visual balance to the proliferation of epic landscape mise-en-scène.

But to the war room! Daenerys wishes to
chase down Euron’s fleet personally and burn them to their waterlines with her
dragons—which, I must confess, I think is the best response. Yes, it puts the
queen at risk, but … dragons! How better to wipe that smug grin off Euron’s
face than with fire as hot as the sun? Fortunately for her advisors, who are
not keen on the idea, she allows herself to be distracted by Tyrion’s battle
plan.

And we’re back to fathers and sons.
“Interesting thing about my father,” says Tyrion, “He built our house up from
near ruin. He built our army, he built Casterly Rock as we know it … but he
didn’t build the sewers.” No, he gave Tyrion that job to punish him for being
Tyrion—and Tyrion took advantage of his father’s arrogance to build a back door
into an otherwise impregnable castle in order to better continue his nocturnal
debauches.

(Just as an aside: why is Tyrion just
telling Daenerys et al about this
plan now? Would this not have been a
conversation they had when he first proposed sacking Casterly Rock? “But it’s
impregnable!” someone says. “You might think so,” he replies, “but listen to
this amusing anecdote about my father’s self-destructive need to humiliate me!”
But no, apparently he just convinced Daenerys to throw the Unsullied against
the seat of Lannister power on the strength of “Don’t worry, I’ll tell you my
plan later”).

We get a Bronn echo in this monologue:
“Casterly Rock is an impregnable fortress,” Tyrion admits, “but as a good
friend of mine once said, ‘Give me ten good men and I’ll impregnate the bitch.’”
That was Bronn’s boast in season one in response to Tyrion’s comment that the
Eyrie was impregnable. The fact that these lines are spoken in voice-over as
the Unsullied run through the main gates like a flood of sperm is … well, on
one hand, a bit overdone; on another hand, at least a little ironic.

(Not included here: Lockett’s tedious professorial
lecture on the semantic significance of “impregnable” as having the same root
as “impregnate” and the fact that in Shakespeare un-sacked cities are referred
to as “maidens” and that the military conquest of towns and fortresses is
explicitly figured as sexual violation. See Henry
V and The Rape of Lucrece if
interested).

Oh, the bait-and-switch of these
episodes—we watch with increasing glee as Daenerys’ forces overcome the
Lannisters, our feelings stoked by Tyrion’s “why we fight” voice-over … only to
realize our heroes have been out-maneuvered again.
Grey Worm suddenly realizes that Casterly Rock is manned by, essentially, a
skeleton crew; and he mounts the battlements to see Daenerys’ fleet again surprised and routed by Euron
Greyjoy. “Where are they?” Grey Worm demands of a dying Lannister soldier.
“Where are the rest of the Lannisters?”

Cut to Jaime riding through the serried
ranks of soldiers the Unsullied had expected to rout. And we see who his allies
are …

Earlier in this post I commented on the
symbolic role of the absent father, so it’s interesting to note that the one
father who is present in the episode
is Randyll Tarly—having obviously decided to betray House Tyrell and throw in
his lot with the Lannisters, we see him riding alongside Bronn as the Lannister
army marches on Highgarden. It’s an interesting little reveal: Randyll Tarly,
however much of an asshole he is to his son Samwell, has a reputation for
honour rivaling Ned Stark’s, something we caught a glimpse of in the last episode.
But here he is: though Jaime was technically
correct last week in saying that his loyalty to the throne supersedes his
loyalty to House Tyrell, the state of the throne is such that Cersei’s
legitimacy is hardly a done deal. More certain is the legitimacy of the
Tyrells, but Randyll has obviously rationalized his betrayal and his elevation
to Warden. Meanwhile, his disinherited son has embraced that fate and found an
almost equally censorious father figure—though one that at least recognizes his
talents.

But more poignantly, we see the approaching
army from the perspective of the Queen of Thorns. Looking down at the attacking
army from her perch, she turns away and waits for the inevitable. Jaime strides
through Highgarden, passing heaps of Tyrell dead. The sequence is actually
quite unusual for the show: mostly a camera following Jaime from behind, with
jump cuts between different parts of the castle as, once again, “The Rains of
Castemere” plays. “It’s done?” Olenna asks Jaime when he enters her chambers.
On hearing the affirmative, she says, with a touch of mockery at her
sentimentality, “And now the rains weep o’er our halls,” citing the very song
playing. (“And so he spoke, and so he spoke, /That lord of Castamere, /But now the rains weep o'er his hall, /
With no one there to hear).

Fighting, Olenna says, “was never our
forte,” a line that echoes her season three excoriation of House Tyrell’s motto
“Growing Strong,” and its choice of a rose as a sigil. She seems unsurprised,
somehow, to be in this position—as if in her long life she has learned not to
rely too heavily on hopeful expectations. Tyrion’s gambit, it turns out, did
not work, at least in part because he did not know how precipitously Lannister
fortunes had declined. Jaime makes clear to Olenna that he values Casterly
Rock—for purely sentimental reasons, and will eventually take it back … but for
the moment, it has no real value. There’s a sad bit of symbolism there for our
episode’s theme of patrimony: Tyrion wanted Casterly Rock, had in fact demanded
it of his father, and been rebuffed in insulting fashion. That he makes this
error now—committing Daenrys’ precious Unsullied to taking a fortress that no
longer has any strategic value—feels entirely like Tywin has checkmated him
from beyond the grave.

But for all of our heroes’ frustrations at
being outmaneuvered, there is at least one gleam of satisfaction in Olenna’s
final barb. Jaime the Merciful will allow her to die without pain, in spite of
all of Cersei’s baroque torture and execution fantasies. Poisoned wine—a poetic
end, and she herself acknowledges.

But before I get into that, let me just say
that in a brilliant episode whose brilliance was the writing and dialogue, this
final scene was just. So. Good. I’m sad to bid farewell to Olenna Tyrell, but
happy that she left this world delivering the barbs (or thorns) she dealt while
in it. She drinks her poisoned wine quickly, so Jaime cannot change his mind
about the method of her execution, but then explains why a painless poison is so very different from the way she
murdered his son. “Not at all what I intended,” she says, having gulped down
her death. “Tell Cersei. I want her to know it was me.”

There are two great moments of face acting
in this episode: Ellaria, when she realizes that Cersei has killed Tyene, and
Jaime, when Olenna’s words land.

And with the latter, the episode ends. That
it ends not with a huge spectacle or plot twist, but with the revelation of a
truth we already knew speaks to the
power of this episode’s writing. Things are coming together; Jon Snow meets
Daenerys, but secrets like Olenna’s murder of Joffrey are coming to light. We
don’t necessarily need Bran to be the Three-Eyed Raven to tell us what’s
what—shit’s getting real one way or another.

And with that, we’re done with another week
of Game of Thrones! Thank you all,
and we’ll see you next week. In the meantime, call you dads and tell them you
love them … you have no idea what might happen otherwise.

3 comments:

leorarufus
said...

Thank you for the review. There was so much info in this episode that it was hard to pick my favorite.

The biggest difference between Cersi and Dany is that Cesi is willing to be Queen of the ashes as she thinks everyone is replaceable. At this point Cersi has won the people as they fear the Mother of Dragons and her horde.

There hasn't been a battle where Cersi can see what she is up against and that her less than honorable tactics may fail against. When we saw the scene with Arya and the Lannister soldiers we saw a group of men who had kindness in them and after their bit of adventure just wanted to go home. Dany's soldiers follow her as she is the one who gave them the freedom they never had. They know the cost of failure is the return to servitude, if they survive the wars. The Dothraki follow the unburnt Mother of Dragons who defeated her rivals. She has a connection to her people Cersi does not.

Now to Bran his behavior can be compared to someone in a dissociative state who sometimes is lucid and in the present. Bran gets to relive periods of time with people who has had terrible things happen to them. The worst thing for Santa was her wedding night but the second worst thing would be having to watch that night happen. Bran may not have known who Ramsey was so his vision would have started with him seeing his sister looking beautiful at her wedding then have to watch what her marriage was going to become and not have the power to protect her. Bran is new to his calling and has seen a lot of cruelty in a short time. That's a lot of trauma.

Olenna shall be missed. Her last barb may mean more to Jamie than Cersi and will influence his next meeting with Tyron, if there is one.

I must say as we go further along I'm liking Dany less and less. So arrogant and condescending to all others... I've always been a huge fan of Cersei and have always thought she should win at the end. I hope we get one final twist and it actually happens...

Really Jon - you don't even ASK if somehow Dany would send just one fire-breathing dragon to fight the ice army? Maybe even offer to bend the knee? What are the two laws of business? - everything is negotiable and it never hurts to ask...

So fired up to see BRONN! He, Cersei and Meli have always been my favs and I look forward to his reunion with Tyrion. It better happen...

I know she went the other way but I totally thought Cersei's assistant was Arya. Also, Jamie must know she was thinking about Euron the entire time...

I won’t expand too much on the notes I’d made while reading this shortly after it was posted, since we’re almost a fortnight removed from the episode, and I’ve kept my comments spoiler-free in terms of subsequent installments, but…

@Christopher: — “The Queen’s Justice” is brilliant specifically because of the cumulative power of this series. —

Yes. Payback may be a bitch, as illustrated by this very episode, but payoff rocks. I’m almost giddy simply watching the disparate factions we’ve followed now become aware of and discuss, message, or even meet up with one another, let alone seeing various narrative mysteries and in-story augurs and viewer hopes be realized.

@Christopher: — let me rhapsodize a moment longer on just how beautiful this episode looked —

It really did. The environs of Dragonstone were particularly striking to me — I spent most of my childhood in a seashore town (on a barrier island that was dead flat, so nothing like the picturesque cliffsides here) and rocky coastlines are my atmospheric, nigh-synesthetic jam — but there were several shots throughout the episode that prompted me to freeze the screen in admiration.

@Nikki: — Yes, I said it. I despise Cersei, but Myrcella had no role to play in any of this other than to be the pawn that Ellaria drew in to the battle. —

Yup.

@Nikki: — And then along comes a brother who tells her he can see everything that’s ever happened and will happen all at once. —

This struck me as so ham-fisted that I’m compelled to assume the scene between Sansa and Bran was not originally intended to run immediately after the one of Littlefinger creepily cooing his quantum-entanglement wisdom in her ear but ended up there for lack of options in the final cut.

@Nikki: — Sam proved that the answers can lie in books —

My interpretation of the Archmaester’s decision is that he’s well aware of this, and Sam can’t very well copy the rare, ancient texts to which he was previously denied access without reading them while doing so, making this a punishment in the same vein as Starfleet’s demotion of Kirk from Admiral back to Captain of the Enterprise at the end of The Voyage Home.

@Christopher: — Would this not have been a conversation they had when he first proposed sacking Casterly Rock? —

Yes. I’m especially confused about why this conversation couldn’t have been framed as a flashback in some way or adjusted into exposition for the sake of other characters given how the first scenes of the assault playing under Tyrion’s narration are then undercut by what’s really going on. On another note, I’ve been surprised that none of the few recaps of the show I follow mentioned what I believed to be a total groaner of Tyrion’s, so much so that I now wonder if neither the writers nor the actor delivering the line actually intended it in the first place: “He didn’t build the sewers. That was beneath him.” Rimshot. Hand of the Queen, ladies and gentlemen; here all week.

@ Christopher: — That it ends not with a huge spectacle or plot twist, but with the revelation of a truth we already knew speaks to the power of this episode’s writing. —

Very much so. I’m still frustrated by a fair amount of what the show’s been throwing at us in terms of the decisions the characters make and the whiplash shift into high-gear pacing with its accompanying Westeros Wormhole travel times but there’s a whole lot of very satisfying stuff happening as well regarding both storylines colliding and pure craft being exercised.

Mostly, I write about television, and with this being the home of the Great Buffy Rewatch of 2011, a lot of that television is Joss Whedon-related (when it's not about Lost). Stick around if you love Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, Sherlock, Lost, BtVS, Doctor Who, or anything on HBO.

About Me

I've published companion guides to Xena, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Alias, and Lost through ECW Press, and my latest book is "Finding Lost — Season Six: The Unofficial Guide." Currently, I love Revenge, Community, Breaking Bad, Mad Men, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead... actually, pretty much everything on HBO or AMC.

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